


Home Is Where The Heart Is (And my heart is home with you)

by BarnesnMrNoble



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Gen, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt Natasha Romanov, Hurt/Comfort, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Platonic Clint and Nat, Protective Clint Barton, Protective Natasha Romanov, Sleepy Cuddles, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24694753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarnesnMrNoble/pseuds/BarnesnMrNoble
Summary: Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov are close, so close the rest of the avengers think they are together. This is why.orThe three times Natasha and Clint made the Avengers think they were together, and the one time they told somebody what they  really were.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov
Comments: 12
Kudos: 126





	Home Is Where The Heart Is (And my heart is home with you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [startrekkingaroundasgard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/startrekkingaroundasgard/gifts).



> For my dearest wife, Nicola. I finally finished this and it is so so late for your challenge but I hope you enjoy it.

It’s puzzle pieces. The way they fit together, like the last piece of the puzzle that slides into place and just feels right. It brings such satisfaction and warmth to them and everyone around them. A feeling sorely needed in the world they live in, a world where villains attack on a weekly basis. 

Steve notices it first. It’s always been clear that Clint and Natasha were close, their relationship tracks through their years. Clint was after all the reason Natasha was here on the team, and really here at all. If he had followed through with his orders, not done the very Clint Barton thing to do, Natasha would’ve been a terminated target, a mark of red in his ledger. Steve is grateful for Clint’s decision, grateful for Natasha sticking around. They balance each other. They balance the team.

Steve’s walking into the kitchen after his run, he needs coffee and some pancakes. 

It’s Sunday and he always makes pancakes for anybody who wanders into the kitchen. Natasha is sitting on the couch, her nose buried in a book and a blanket draped over her lap. She isn’t easy to read, Steve has been trying to learn her tells for awhile now. He’s made a little progress, enough to know that the stiffness of her shoulders is indicative of a lack of sleep, he thinks. 

He really only had made a little progress in the book of Natasha. 

Steve catches her gaze and lifts the coffee pot in the air, a silent question. She nods and goes back to reading her book. He is grabbing a mug when the elevator chimes. He can’t see who it is yet, but he does see Natasha’s shoulders relax further, her face soften that can only mean she feels safe. Steve deduces it’s Clint that comes out of the elevator with Natasha’s reaction and silently grabs a third mug for him. 

He cringes when Clint rounds the corner so that Steve can see him. He is making a b-line to the couch, looking like he’s been to hell three times and spat back out. Steve can see a fresh new set of stitches along his hairline, several band-aids across his nose and neck, a compression bandage around his wrist, and a slight limp that favors his right leg. He doesn’t know where he was, or what his mission was about but he can tell it wasn’t easy. He tamps his urge to run over and check him over.

He does stand back and watch Clint for a minute. And it honestly does take him a minute to cross the room and get to Natasha. Steve smiles as he watches Natasha lift the blanket from her lap and wait for Clint to drop into her lap without pulling her gaze from her book. He holds a snort when he watches Clint gracefully shift himself between Natasha and the arm of the couch, throwing his legs over her lap and shoving his nose into her neck, and grumpily pulling his aids from his ear. Natasha grabs them before he can carelessly drop them on the floor where they will get stepped on. 

It’s intimate in a way that Steve feels odd watching it, but he feels comforted seeing their closeness. He fails to conceal his snort this time as Clint keeps shifting around, and Natasha runs an impatient hand through his hair. She meets Steve’s eyes and smiles. He leaves the mugs on the coffee table as he leaves and lets his fingers just barely brush along her shoulders. 

He finds them later in the day, in the same position but both mugs are empty and Natasha has moved on to a new book.  
\----

Tony watches them in the field, grace and agility and terrifying fluidity that comes with their time as assassins. He can hear their chatter on his comms, and he will vehemently deny it if asked, but Tony does also have a video feed dedicated just to them. He’s tried to make them better weapons, maybe even some armor to protect them but they decline every time. This was his way of ensuring their safety so he didn’t lose any of his team.

It’s mesmerizing to watch them. The level of trust they have in each other to protect and watch over one another. Where Natasha swings low, Clint goes high. When Clint gets his bow kicked from his hand, Nat is tossing him a loaded gun before his bow has even hit the ground. It’s a choreographed dance in every fight. Quick steps that took years of practice and even more trust. If he didn’t know better, (and hadn’t run scans while they were in medical. Seriously, his curiosity is too powerful for him to ignore. And will probably get him killed if Nat ever finds out, but that doesn’t seem to stop him.) Tony would think they had a psychic connection, that they could read each other’s mind.

Tony pauses his own fight, hovering near the rooftop Clint has been perched on. Distracted, he watches Clint draw his bow, watches the slow rise of his chest and even slower fall as he lets out half his breath before letting the arrow fly. Tony follows its path right down to the moment Natasha, with her back turned to the arrow, stiffens her head for just long enough for just the fletching of the arrow graze along her cheekbone. 

From his suit, Tony lets his bottom jaw fall open in amazement. Both at the shot and the trust displayed in a moment no longer than 3 seconds. (He has never been more thankful for the fact he has a face plate hiding him.) Clint is already moving to the next target, but Tony can see he still has one eye on Nat. He gives the slightest uptick of his lips when she takes down the bot in front of her and throws him a wink over her shoulder. 

The fight doesn’t last much longer after that. Now that they’ve got their hands on the intel they came for and Tony and Steve both managed to land well placed hits on the tech controlling the bots surrounding them, there isn’t much to do. They regroup at the base of the jet ramp and Natasha throws the drive to Tony so he can work on decrypting the information and sending it off to Fury.   
_ _ _

Clint knew it in his bones. 

Something was off. 

Not off in the way that he needed to grab the knife from under his pillow, or his bow from beside the door. No, this was something off that he couldn’t quite place. 

He knew where he needed to go first. He threw the covers off of himself and slinked out his bed, forgoing his aids and just slugging on a shirt and grabbing the extra big hoodie (the one that was two sizes too big, even on him.) he’d been wearing all day. His eyes weren’t adjusted to the darkness but his feet took him down the path of the hallways like he was doing this in a more coherent state of mind. 

He couldn’t hear the music as he approached the doors of the gym, not without his aids in but he could just barely feel the faintest of vibrations that told him it was playing and his suspicions were correct. He opened the door just wide enough for him to slip in and just stopped to watch for a moment. 

Clean, long lines extended from shoulder to fingertip, hip down to the point of her toe. She was beautiful like this, ethereal and deadly her grace betraying her strength. She caught his eyes in the mirror and quickly avoided his gaze. It must have been bad today. 

They didn’t need conversation, barely even needed eye contact and silent conversations. Natasha was still dancing, strong lines flowing with the bend of her elbows and then her knees. She began a turn but Clint caught her just as she started to face him and she just fell into him. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her, the fingers of his left hand tracking up the back of her neck to give her an anchor where they grabbed and the small hairs at the base of her neck. 

It was just on the right side of enough pain to ground her but to avoid any flashbacks. A tight line to walk, and one that had taken many years and a few stabbings to find. Clint still had the scars from each and every one but he wore them proudly for her because they were proof of how far she’d come, and what she’d overcome. 

It was a few minutes before either one of them pulled back, when they did neither said anything still. Clint just dropped a kiss to her forehead, ignoring the beads of sweat along her brow and slipped the sweatshirt over her head and put her arms through the sleeves, reveling in how much the too large sweatshirt drowned her. 

He turned his back to her and she wordlessly jumped up onto his back and hooked her legs around his waist. He gripped her tighter as she began to sag against him, the tension of whatever was going through her head melting away. 

Bruce smiles over the rim of his mug watching them pass by him, unaware or uncaring of his presence. He’d heard the music when he came down and had gone to investigate. He decided to hang back in the shadows and watch the soft encounter of two deadly assassins. 

They walked, well Clint walked through the halls and disappeared into the darkness of his room before setting her down on her “claimed side” of the bed for nights like this, shuffling under the covers with her and letting her choose where she was comfortable. 

Some days she would curl into his warmth and leech it from him, other days she could only stomach the smallest point of contact, where she needed the reassurance of Clint’s presence without the suffocating feel of touch. Tonight seemed to fall in the middle. She lay on her side next to him, keeping a few inches of space but threading her fingers through Clint’s and squeezing, once, twice, three times before letting her eyes flutter shut with a sigh. Beside her Clint kisses the back of her hand and watches her sleep for a moment before letting himself relax as well, knowing tomorrow is a new day.   
____

It’s not a news flash that Clint can be reckless, that he will throw himself into the worst situation to make sure anybody and everybody else makes it away safely. 

Despite the frequency of these events, it doesn’t stop Natasha’s heart from dropping when she finds out Clint was hurt. 

She doesn’t much care for going on missions without Clint anymore, in all reality she’s never liked it but since their joining up to the “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” team, Natasha has become overly protective of Clint, meaning they are rarely separated from each other. This was a rare case, she was needed on one side of the world and he was needed on the other. 

Having such similar skill sets was both a blessing and a curse. 

She knew Clint had been on an extraction mission somewhere in the eastern part of Afghanistan. She had been on a quiet mission in Bora Bora tailing an arms dealer that had been on Shield’s watchlist for sometime. She’s jet lagged, in desperate need of some food and a good night's rest but that’s not what is on her mind. 

When she’d come out of the elevator to the common room, she’d been expecting various team members going about their day, like normal. She’d been met with Tony, who looked nothing like his normal cocksure self. With a quick assessment, she sees how he is wringing his hands together and pulling at the skin, how his eyes and face are red and splotchy and there are dried tears along his cheeks. Fresh tears fall when he sees her.

“Natasha.” 

He says it in a breath, drawn out and like just saying her name is putting him so close to the edge of losing it all over it again. He looks like he is itching to reach out to her, to hug her but he decides better of it and starts fidgeting with his hands again. She’s grateful for it, she isn’t sure she can handle touch right now. She doesn’t think she’d be able to keep a handle on her emotions. 

“What happened.” The words come out though her teeth, bordering on anger that sounds like she might murder Tony. She doesn’t mean for them to come out so angrily, but her sanity is banking on her keeping her eyes from watering and her voice from cracking away. Tony doesn’t say anything more, just turns away to lead Natasha down to medical. 

She isn’t sure what she is expecting when she cautiously walks into the room. It’s so common to have Clint down here, - even more common to try and wrangle him back after he inevitably tries to escape -- that they’ve done what they could to not make it so sterile and white. Tony had the walls painted a soft lavender, the sheets and the mattress aren’t standard issue because Clint’s go to excuse was that the sheets were itchy and the bed was worse than laying on concrete, so Tony had them replaced with a memory foam mattress and some of the softest sheets he’s ever felt. 

Her heart drops further than it had before and before she realizes her body reaches out and grabs Tony’s hand squeezing it like it’s her only lifeline. Which in retrospect, it probably is. He squeezes back and Natasha feels herself relax just a bit. She breaks away from him, walking to Clint’s side. She very carefully grabs his hand, careful to not jostle the wires and tubes that he is connected to. 

Bruce stops by her side, drags a chair up behind her and whispers her name to let her know she can sit. He doesn’t look any better than Tony, more composed maybe but Nat can see where the worry lines around his eyes are more pronounced, where he bits his lip to hide it quivering as he holds back his emotion and tries to be professional. “Bruce.” His eyes snap to hers and she watches his lips pull into a tight line. “What happened?” 

Steve pipes up from across the bed, “Natasha,” She knows what he wants to say, for being the second most reckless team member he sure is a mother hen. In any other situation, she might’ve laughed and called him out. Now, she just doesn’t have the energy. “Tell me. Please.” Steve nods and pulls up his own chair and Tony grabs one from the hall and sets it next to Nat.

“He was facilitating an extraction of a foreign national from Afghanistan. They were twenty miles out from exfil when their convoy was hit with a sonic EMP. It knocked out his aids. He got the target into a rescue vehicle but with his aids knocked out, he missed them calling out the IED under their humvee. He got in to grab the driver when it went off.” Steve finished. Tony had his hand turned face up as an open invite should Natasha want it, and she realized she was having a hard time declining and grabbed his hand again. 

“He’ll be okay,” Tony started. “The recovery will be long. He’s got burns across his left side, mostly his arm and neck, shrapnel that was removed during surgery. His leg was a bit roughed up and he’ll need surgery once he is more stable to repair the tendon that was torn. He’s got a few more injuries but those are the most serious. He’ll be here for a while, and he is going to hate it. No amount of soft sheets and purple walls is going to keep him in here.” It startled a laugh out of her and Tony suppressed his urge to fist pump the air. It was true, he was going to pull every trick he had to escape but she wasn’t above handcuffing him to the bed until the doctors cleared him. The hand in hers squeezed again, “He’ll be okay. He’s tougher than nails.” 

The rest of the team made to give her some time alone with Clint. Tony stood to leave but Natasha just squeezed his hand and asked him to stay. He sat back down and moved his chair closer, muttering softly to Natasha. “Hey, don’t kill me for this, okay? I just I think you need it right now because this isn’t easy and I know if it was me, I’d want someone there to comfort me and-” 

“Tony,”

“Oh, right. Don’t kill me.” 

Natasha never thought she’d be okay with it but when Tony wrapped his arms around her, she melted into his arms. “I’m not going to kill you, but I will deny this ever happening if you tell anyone.” Tony only chuckled. “You know, it may not be the best time to ask this, and feel free to punch me if I’m way out of line, but you and Clint…” 

They turned their chairs to face each other, but Natasha never let go of Clint’s hand. “Hmm, no, we aren’t.” Tony scoffed, “Then I need to work on my spy skills, you teaching any classes?” 

“To you? No. Neither of us would survive a single class.” 

“God, you’re right. So, you two are just friends? You guys are so close, I won’t say it again because I’d rather live but you both get soft around each other. It’s sweet, sometimes I think it’s what keeps all of us going but I just never thought it was “just friends” you know?” 

“I think there was a time he was a friend, but now? Now, he is my family. Everybody I need rolled into one big coffee addicted, reckless mess. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Clint. I owe him a lot. No, I owe him everything.” 

Against his better judgment, and survival instincts, Tony leans forward to hug her again. He’s never seen her so open, so vulnerable and he’d be an ass to take advantage of it so he forgoes words that would definitely end up with his foot in his mouth and just leaves it at the embrace. 

They both pull away when Clint groans, “Tash?” He tries to sit up but Natasha just pushes him back down. 

“Yastreb, rest. I’m here, okay.” 

Clint gives a soft nod and lets his eyes flutter shut, quickly falling back into rest.


End file.
